Of course, the Nanosail-D has had some problems along the way — it actually spent the last month and a half stuck in FASTSAT. It was launched in November 2010 along with five other experiments, but when the moment came to launch Nanosail-D, it got stuck. A spring was supposed to push the breadbox-sized probe into an orbit of its own with room to unfurl a sail, but this failed to happen until this week when it spontaneously launched itself.

Nanosail-D will now circle the planet until it skims the atmosphere, allowing aerodynamic drag to eventually bring it down out of orbit. It will then burn up in the atmosphere. Nanosail-D is part of a whole new wave of solar satellites that includes Japan’s IKAROS project. Japan’s space program JAXA is planning on using solar sails to venture deeper into space — IKAROS has already passed Venus and a new mission is expected to sail a satellite by Jupiter later in the decade.